Let's think about why you should even consider a career in the field of
computer science. Other than the fact that it's a nice job that
you can do easily from the comfort of your home, it just so
happens to be a well-payed job as well.

The average annual salary of a good American programmer is about
$80,000. If you're really good, you'll get even higher pay, like
$110,000. Also, if you are not afraid to start a business, well, the sky is the
limit, we all know how many billionaires there are in IT.

Wages are high for the following reasons:

Thanks to us IT people businesses are able to work faster,
serve their clients faster, and sell millions of
products daily in e-shops. The costs to keep machines operational are
very low, and it could be your software that makes them work! Companies will
gladly pay high prices for your services since they'll be able to get back to
mass production in a short amount of time.

Working in IT is an expert field and requires high-quality
knowledge.

Choosing your programming language

For starters, pick one of the following languages (links will open online
courses, the basics of each language are available for
free):

Java - The alpha and omega for
businesses, a modern language with a virtual machine,
that works on all platforms (PC with Windows, Linux, Mac, phones, printers,
ATMs...). Oracle says that Java powers about 3 billion devices.
Java is open-source which means it's completely free and anyone
can contribute to it. I recommend Java if you want to work as a company employee
since wages are great, but be prepared to enterprise complicated libraries.

C# .NET - I'm sure others will forgive
me if I say that C# is "Microsoft's version of Java" (in my humble opinion).
Since the language is maintained by a single company, its libraries are
clearer and better documented than Java. C# has a lot of constructs
that make programming clearer and more efficient, but you'd have to learn all
about them first. For corporate, use you'd have to purchase several
different licenses depending on what it is you're doing. C# is sort of
a "middle ground" in my opinion.

PHP - Nowadays, it's a good-quality and
fully-featured language designed for creating websites. ICT.social is written in
PHP, as well as other popular websites like Facebook, Wikipedia, and so on. It
is said that it powers a large part of the Internet. I
recommend PHP if you're starting your own business. It's low-cost and the
language and frameworks it uses are relatively simple. You could easily get a
job as a PHP programmer as well, but the pay isn't as great.

Other languages

Mainly when working on web-related content, you'll have to mix your
main (server) language with other, usually simpler,
languages:

HTML - A simple markup language that
actually has nothing to do with programming. We use it to mark certain
bits of texts on a website and give meaning to them. We mainly use HTML
to create templates.

CSS - This language originated from
HTML and used to style HTML marks, i.e. the visual design of
the site. It is also not a "real" programming language.

JavaScript - This language is used mainly for web
plugins (slideshows, galleries, chats, loading stuff in the
background), however, you can write servers in it as well.

SQL - A database language designed to query data
from a database.

For most applications, you will be able to get by with the
basics of the "other" languages listed above, as they're not
complicated. Don't waste too much time on them, I highly suggest focusing mainly
on one of the primary languages mentioned in the first part of this article. You
will, however, have to improve your use of SQL later on because
with more complex applications come more complex database queries.

The ICT.social network was created to provide all of the information
necessary for you to succeed. One might even say that it is something like a
Wikipedia for programmers with real insight on the current state of the
industry.